How to measure real home energy rating ? i.e Not EPC guesswork

I would say get the loft insulation to 300mm deep, though not burying heavy load electricity cables of course. That’s another ventilation minefield though.

I put the bath plug in while showering to at least keep the heat in the vicinity, rather than waste it straight down the drain. There are fancy contraptions that send the waste water around something to preheat the input to the hot water system somehow. Struck me as a bit over-engineered.

Envirovent reckon the Heatsava recovers 75% of the heat, which is far better than just losing it all through an open window of course.

Here is one of the problems about setting up a monitoring system, which is the right one ?.

The one I’ve gone for is SwitchBot. I only buy them when there’s an Amazon sale, last ones were £13 each.

Once I’ve got a thermometer in all the right places, I then need to find out how to get all the measurements into one computer at the same time.

I think I need to join the SwitchBot forum !.

I did join the SwitchBot forum !.

I think I’m the only one there ☹️

Hi @Buzby, not such quick responders, then, as some on the OVO forum?! 
 

Let us know how you get on with syncing your thermometers and managing the data…interesting project…

I had a reply from SwitchBot. They do not have any PC based solutions, it’s all phone apps. They do have an API, but that needs the devices to be connected to the Cloud, and I don’t want that.

However, I did find a YouTube video where a guy programmed an RPi to directly read the devices using BLE. That looks promising, no Hub or Cloud involved.

I’ve already got an RPi ( somewhere ), so I just need to find the video again, find some time, and learn RPi stuff.

I will keep you informed of progress, but don’t hold your breath !.

Cheers,

Buzby

This is turning into a good discussion, thanks for starting it, @Buzby. Keep us updated on SwitchBot and we’ll convert this topic into a discussion dedicated to that which others might find helpful. 

Hi @Buzby with specific regard to Raspberry pi linked to energy monitoring sensors I wonder whether you’ve seen the thread on this forum from a year or so back

Energy monitoring - going beyond smart meters…

posted by @Simon1D, with fascinating exchanges largely between him and @Transparent as well as @Tim_OVO and others.  A lot of it is very technical, way above my pay grade! But it is based around RPi (Model-3 I think?), and as one of the posts says, the energy monitoring design as envisaged aims to address such points as these:

the proportion of renewable energy at any given point in time

showing which devices are consuming most electricity in the home

getting some idea of whether it’s viable to increase the level of insulation

considering changes to the way you heat the home in future

which sound right up your street?  Hope it’s of relevance to you….

I’m moving forward !

The YouTube vid is a bit old. When I went to GitHub to find the script, there is a message there saying the script is no longer needed, as the Home Automation platform now incudes SwitchBot directly via BLE.

Home Automation is something I’d heard of, but had never really considered, as it just seemed to be ‘Turn on kettle when I get home’ type of stuff.

But looking at it a bit more, it can do graphs with upto eight traces, so it’s worth a look.

Luckily my RPi is just about big enough to run HA, so I won’t need to spend money on a new one, and HA is free. It looks like a possible solution to Part 1 of my project.

Cheers,

Buzby

I took a long time to get this RPi running Home Automation. Don’t believe any of the hype about how easy it is !.

The HA system automatically finds all the Switchbot thermometers that are in range. ( It also found my televisions, radios, BT speakers, and printers ! ) I have not yet found a location for the RPi where it can see all the thermometers, I might need to rethink my strategy.

The 8-channel graph that caught my attention is not as clever as it looks. It can’t view a historic window, only the latest values. I might need to delve into the HA config to change that.

However, it’s a step forward !.